An unofficial Croydon, Sutton and Surrey Green Party blog by Shasha Khan. Having lived in Croydon most of my life, I now live just outside the south west of the borough in Woodmansterne.

Friday, January 08, 2016

Cabinet member answers written question on waste

CROYDON COUNCIL MEETING: MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2015
PUBLIC QUESTION TIME
WRITTEN QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC

From Mr Shasha Khan

To Councillor Stuart Collins
Cabinet Member for Clean, Green Croydon

Question No.
PQ055-15

The Viridor landfill site at Beddington Farmlands has a license that ends in 2023. The
South London Waste Partnership was formed to deal with its waste locally, within
Croydon, Sutton, Kingston and Merton. Why therefore will all the SLWP waste,
including Croydon’s, be sent to a site near Heathrow?

Reply

As you would expect, Croydon and the South London Waste Partnership work to
manage our waste as sustainably as possible. In the first instance this means that we
reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible. For waste that remains, landfill is the
least sustainable option for disposal. While the local landfill option is available at
Beddington Lane, the boroughs continue to deliver waste here and at the same time
construction has started on the Beddington Lane Energy Recovery Facility. Through
the Partnership’s contract with Viridor, residual waste has consistently been diverted
from landfill where possible and in 2014/15, 20% of the Partnership’s waste went to
the Lakeside ERF. The Partnership is exploring options for waste disposal for residual
waste during the construction period for the ERF as, now that the facility will be
completed later than initially anticipated, it may be necessary to have an alternative
provision in place; this could include sending more waste to an alternative ERF for a
brief period.

I asked the above question because Councillor Nick Mattey has calculated that the landfill cell space at Beddington Farmlands has almost come to an end. This link reveals just how much space Viridor secured in 2004 when they purchased the site. The Pennon Group (Viridor's parent company) article states 4m cubic metres of consented capacity was purchased. The license Viridor obtained allowed them to deal with 400,000 tonnes of waste a year. The maths suggest that by 2014 the site must be close to capacity.

One can argue, Viridor's tactic was purchase the site, acquire the extension - knowing there was practically no spare capacity past 2015, and then switch to an incinerator with a view to telling the public they would get their country park in 2017 - 6 years earlier - as a sweetener.